Experiments in sandscaping: Liminal entanglements on the Norfolk and South Holland Coast

Book 2 0 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosanne van der Voet
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Coastal Environments ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
The North ◽  
Plant Life ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Time Machines ◽  
Rising Sea Levels ◽  
Adaptive Nature ◽  
Bristle Worms

This hybrid creative-critical article explores how new ways of living beyond the current environmental crisis are forged on two sandscaping schemes that have been constructed as new experimental measures against coastal erosion. The Zandmotor, created in 2011, is an artificial peninsula built out of sand on the coast of South Holland. The success of this project inspired a similar sandscaping scheme at Bacton on the coast of Norfolk, constructed in 2019. The strange liminal landscapes that are the result of these projects are not just symbols of adaptive, nature-based water management in times of rising sea levels, they also become time machines, making fossils of different times emerge out of the sand taken from the seabed of the North Sea. In addition, the sandscapes are symbols of the artificialization of the coastal landscape, given the fact that sand suppletions disrupt not only life on the beach, but also destroy much bottom-dwelling life on the seabed from which the sand is harvested. However, these unique liminal landscapes between land and sea also create new ecological opportunities. At the Zandmotor, for example, rare bristle worms and Baltic clams have made their unexpected appearance. Moreover, the sandscape invites people not just to look for fossilized mammoth teeth, but also inspires them to create sense-altering art projects specifically adapted to the unique conditions in the area. In this article, I trace these various significances of both sandscaping schemes and argue that they cannot be reduced to any of these different meanings. Instead, I describe the Zandmotor as an example of Donna Haraway’s idea of ‘staying with the trouble’ (2016: 4) and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s concept of ‘contaminated diversity’ (2015: 30). For although enormous amounts of animal and plant life have been destroyed for the creation of the Zandmotor, this does not discredit the fact that this new liminal environment has opened up new ecological opportunities for multispecies flourishing, creating unexpected combinations of landscapes and creatures. These new combinations inspire a shift in thinking about coastal environments and present new ways of living that may emerge beyond the current environmental crisis.

scholarly journals The catastrophic final flooding of Doggerland by the Storegga Slide tsunami

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Weninger ◽  
Rick Schulting ◽  
Marcel Bradtmöller ◽  
Lee Clare ◽  
Mark Collard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Continental Shelf ◽  
North Sea ◽  
Submarine Landslide ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
The Holocene ◽  
The North ◽  
Coastal Margin ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Rising Sea Levels ◽  
Storegga Slide

Around 8200 calBP, large parts of the now submerged North Sea continental shelf (‘Doggerland’) were catastrophically flooded by the Storegga Slide tsunami, one of the largest tsunamis known for the Holocene, which was generated on the Norwegian coastal margin by a submarine landslide. In the present paper, we derive a precise calendric date for the Storegga Slide tsunami, use this date for reconstruction of contemporary coastlines in the North Sea in relation to rapidly rising sea-levels, and discuss the potential effects of the tsunami on the contemporaneous Mesolithic population. One main result of this study is an unexpectedly high tsunami impact assigned to the western regions of Jutland.

What can idealized storm surge simulations tell us about worst case scenarios?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elin Andrée ◽  
Jian Su ◽  
Martin Drews ◽  
Morten Andreas Dahl Larsen ◽  
Asger Bendix Hansen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Wind Speed ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
North Sea ◽  
Wind Direction ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Sea Coast ◽  
North Sea Coast

<p>The potential impacts of extreme sea level events are becoming more apparent to the public and policy makers alike. As the magnitude of these events are expected to increase due to climate change, and increased coastal urbanization results in ever increasing stakes in the coastal zones, the need for risk assessments is growing too.</p><p>The physical conditions that generate extreme sea levels are highly dependent on site specific conditions, such as bathymetry, tidal regime, wind fetch and the shape of the coastline. For a low-lying country like Denmark, which consists of a peninsula and islands that partition off the semi-enclosed Baltic Sea from the North Sea, a better understanding of how the local sea level responds to wind forcing is urgently called for.</p><p>We here present a map for Denmark that shows the most efficient wind directions for generating extreme sea levels, for a total of 70 locations distributed all over the country’s coastlines. The maps are produced by conducting simulations with a high resolution, 3D-ocean model, which is used for operational storm surge modelling at the Danish Meteorological Institute. We force the model with idealized wind fields that maintain a fixed wind speed and wind direction over the entire model domain. Simulations are conducted for one wind speed and one wind direction at a time, generating ensembles of a set of wind directions for a fixed wind speed, as well as a set of wind speeds for a fixed wind direction, respectively.</p><p>For each wind direction, we find that the maximum water level at a given location increases linearly with the wind speed, and the slope values show clear spatial patterns, for example distinguishing the Danish southern North Sea coast from the central or northern North Sea Coast. The slope values are highest along the southwestern North Sea coast, where the passage of North Atlantic low pressure systems over the shallow North Sea, as well as the large tidal range, result in a much larger range of variability than in the more sheltered Inner Danish Waters. However, in our simulations the large fetch of the Baltic Sea, in combination with the funneling effect of the Danish Straits, result in almost as high water levels as along the North Sea coast.</p><p>Although the wind forcing is completely synthetic with no spatial and temporal structure of a real storm, this idealized approach allows us to systematically investigate the sea level response at the boundaries of what is physically plausible. We evaluate the results from these simulations by comparison to peak water levels from a 58 year long, high resolution ocean hindcast, with promising agreement.</p>

scholarly journals Climate Change, Mining and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge in Australia

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Birch
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
Depth Of Knowledge ◽  
The North ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Rising Sea Levels ◽  
Indigenous Society

Australia, in common with nations globally, faces an immediate and future environmental and economic challenge as an outcome of climate change. Indigenous communities in Australia, some who live a precarious economic and social existence, are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Impacts are already being experienced through dramatic weather events such as floods and bushfires. Other, more gradual changes, such as rising sea levels in the north of Australia, will have long-term negative consequences on communities, including the possibility of forced relocation. Climate change is also a historical phenomenon, and Indigenous communities hold a depth of knowledge of climate change and its impact on local ecologies of benefit to the wider community when policies to deal with an increasingly warmer world are considered. Non-Indigenous society must respect this knowledge and facilitate alliances with Indigenous communities based on a greater recognition of traditional knowledge systems.

Prospectivity of the Triassic successions of the North West Shelf of Australia: New insights from a regional integrated geoscience study

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 172-177
Author(s):  
Jarrad Grahame ◽  
Victoria Cole
Keyword(s):  
Evaluation Tool ◽  
System Perspective ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
North West ◽  
Petroleum Systems ◽  
The North ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Half Graben ◽  
Rift Zones ◽  
Rising Sea Levels

The North West Shelf (NWS) of Australia is a prolific hydrocarbon province hosting significant volumes of hydrocarbons, primarily derived from Jurassic and Cretaceous targets. A new regional, integrated geoscience study has been undertaken to develop insights into the paleogeography and petroleum systems of Late Permian to Triassic successions, which have been underexplored historically in favor of Jurassic to Cretaceous targets. Within the NWS study area, graben and half-graben depocenters developed in response to intracratonic rifting that preceded later fragmentation and northward rifting of small continental blocks. This, coupled with contemporaneous cycles of rising sea levels, brought about the development of large embayments and shallow, epeiric seas between the Australian continental landmass and outlying continental fragments in the early stages of divergence. Key elements of the study results discussed herein include the study methodology, the paleogeographic and gross depositional environment mapping, and the reservoir and source kitchen modeling. The study results highlight the presence of depocenters that developed within oblique rift zones due to regional Permo-Triassic strike-slip tectonics that bear compelling similarities to modern-day analogues. These intracratonic rift zones are well-known and prominent tectonic features resulting from mantle upwelling and weakening of overlying lithospheric crust, initiating the development of divergent intraplate depocenters. The comprehensive analysis of these depocenters from a paleogeographic and petroleum system perspective provides a basin evaluation tool for Triassic prospectivity.

scholarly journals Tropical Cyclone-Induced Hazards Caused by Storm Surges and Large Waves on the Coast of China

Geosciences ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zai-Jin You
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Storm Surges ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
Coastal Hazards ◽  
Economic Losses ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
The North ◽  
Coastal Waves ◽  
Storm Wave ◽  
Rising Sea Levels

The mainland coast of China is about 18,000 km long and houses about 70% of China’s largest cities and 50% of its population. For the last few decades, the rapid growth of the Chinese economy has resulted in extensive development of the coastal infrastructure and property, large-scale expansion of coastal ports, excessive reclamation of coastal land, and a significant increase in the coastal population. Previous studies have indicated that tropical cyclones (TCs) have struck the coast of China at a higher frequency and intensity, and TC-induced coastal hazards have resulted in heavy human losses and huge losses to the Chinese coastal economy. In analyzing the long-term and most recent coastal hazard data collected on the coast of China, this study has found that TC-induced storm surges are responsible for 88% of the direct coastal economic losses, while TC-induced large coastal waves have caused heavy loss of human lives, and that the hazard-caused losses are shown to increase spatially from the north to south, peak in the southern coastal sector, and well correlate to storm wave energy flux. The frequency and intensity of coastal hazards on the coast of China are expected to increase in response to future changing TC conditions and rising sea levels. A simple two-parameter conceptual model is also presented for the assessment of coastal inundation and erosion hazards on the coast of China.

scholarly journals A STUDY OF ADAPTATION CAPACITY OF COASTAL DISASTERS DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN ORDER TO STRENGTHEN SOUTHWEST AREA OF TAIWAN

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (33) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Hsiang-Lan Juan ◽  
Tai-Wen Hsu ◽  
Yuan-Jyh Lan ◽  
Yue-Chen Lin ◽  
Ching-Jer Huang
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Estimation ◽  
Storm Surges ◽  
Coastal Environments ◽  
Coastal Zones ◽  
Situation Analysis ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
Adaptation Capacity ◽  
Southwestern Taiwan ◽  
Rising Sea Levels

The adaptive capacity of coastal disasters caused by climate change in order to strengthen southwestern Taiwan against natural calamities in the future is investigated in this paper. In Taiwan, the coastal zone suffers from approximately four typhoons each year, and the exceptionally high sea levels caused by storm surges frequently results in coastal disasters and hinders the development of the coastal area. The problems of rising sea levels and frequent typhoons induced by climate change have threatened the Taiwanese coastal environments. These influences as well as serious land subsidence upon a scenario year were carried out in the coastal areas near the cities of Chiayi and Tainan in Taiwan. The present study focuses on the construction of the disaster characteristics on Chiayi and Tainan Coasts, model establishment for situation analysis of water environmental factors, impact estimation and indefinite analysis on disasters, and vulnerability and risk estimation of coastal disasters. An understanding of the marine and meteorological characteristics in coastal zones is conducive to raising the efficiency of the defense against coastal disasters. These results could provide useful information to establish strategies to implement as well as how to analyze the benefits of such a program.

scholarly journals INTEGRATED MODELLING TO PREDICT LANDSCAPE EVOLUTION, FLOODING, AND WATER QUALITY IN JAMAICA BAY, NY

2018 ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Heather D. Smith ◽  
Philip Orton ◽  
Eric W. Sanderson ◽  
Jordan Fischbach
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
New York ◽  
Integrated Modelling ◽  
The West ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
The North ◽  
Coastal Embayment ◽  
Jamaica Bay ◽  
Rising Sea Levels

It is well-known that rising sea levels will increase pressure along shorelines, yet how society and natural systems will respond is uncertain. Natural systems such as wetlands can respond dynamically to changing conditions, and recent sea level rise has been matched in many places with a rising marsh substrate. The societal response to increasing flooding by necessity is adaptation, particularly in areas with a higher population. However, the subsequent influences on flooding, habitat, and water quality have rarely been evaluated. Jamaica Bay, NY is a coastal embayment bounded on the south by the Rockaway Peninsula and the Atlantic Ocean, on the north by Brooklyn, Queens, and Nassau counties, on the east by the John F. Kennedy Airport, and to the lower bay of New York Harbor on the west through the Rockaway Inlet (Sanderson et al. 2016). The Bay perimeter is home to a large human population, as well as a variety of wildlife that live within the Bay’s salt marsh and adjacent upland ecosystems. The Bay has been identified as an area where ecosystem restoration will potentially have a major impact for protection of the Bay’s population, as well as enhancing the recreational, commercial, and ecological services the Bay provides.

scholarly journals Giant boulders and Last Interglacial storm intensity in the North Atlantic

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (46) ◽  
pp. 12144-12149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessio Rovere ◽  
Elisa Casella ◽  
Daniel L. Harris ◽  
Thomas Lorscheid ◽  
Napayalage A. K. Nandasena ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Last Interglacial ◽  
The Bahamas ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
Storm Intensity ◽  
The North ◽  
Rising Sea Levels ◽  
Mis 5E

As global climate warms and sea level rises, coastal areas will be subject to more frequent extreme flooding and hurricanes. Geologic evidence for extreme coastal storms during past warm periods has the potential to provide fundamental insights into their future intensity. Recent studies argue that during the Last Interglacial (MIS 5e, ∼128–116 ka) tropical and extratropical North Atlantic cyclones may have been more intense than at present, and may have produced waves larger than those observed historically. Such strong swells are inferred to have created a number of geologic features that can be observed today along the coastlines of Bermuda and the Bahamas. In this paper, we investigate the most iconic among these features: massive boulders atop a cliff in North Eleuthera, Bahamas. We combine geologic field surveys, wave models, and boulder transport equations to test the hypothesis that such boulders must have been emplaced by storms of greater-than-historical intensity. By contrast, our results suggest that with the higher relative sea level (RSL) estimated for the Bahamas during MIS 5e, boulders of this size could have been transported by waves generated by storms of historical intensity. Thus, while the megaboulders of Eleuthera cannot be used as geologic proof for past “superstorms,” they do show that with rising sea levels, cliffs and coastal barriers will be subject to significantly greater erosional energy, even without changes in storm intensity.

Dun Ara

2020 ◽  
Vol 149 ◽  
pp. 145-163
Author(s):  
James Petre
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Tidal Cycle ◽  
Short Article ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rising Sea Levels

This short article explores the archaeology and fragmentary history of the site known as Dun Ara, in Mishnish, north Mull, in the light of increasing evidence of a Norse presence both generally in this part of the Inner Hebrides and more specifically this area of Mull. The focus is on the harbour and its appendages but it refers as well to the associated settlement and dun – or castle – perched above to the north. It is set in the context of recent work on early harbours and landing places in the Western Isles, some of which have been demonstrated to have had a Norse presence. Consideration is given to the ramifications of the tidal cycle and to what extent, if any, isostatic change and rising sea levels may affect the ‘picture’ as it is now observed. While reflecting that the evidence for a ‘Norse’ period at Dun Ara remains circumstantial, it suggests that the absence of conclusive proof does not preclude the likelihood.   Canmore ID 11028 Canmore ID 22069 Canmore ID 22071

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